Influence of cabin temperature and compressor speed on the performance of an automotive air conditioning system
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Abstract
This study examines the influence of compressor speed and cabin temperature on the performance of an automotive air conditioning system. An experimental test bench was developed with a compressor coupled to a variable-speed electric motor and equipped with pressure, temperature, and air velocity sensors, as well as a thermal chamber to regulate the temperature of the air entering the evaporator. A thermodynamic model was also implemented to calculate the compressor operating parameters and evaluate system performance. The results show that increasing the compressor speed from 900 to 2800 rpm raises the refrigerant mass flow rate and cooling capacity by up to 50.3 \% and 22.4 \%, respectively, thereby improving the cooling capacity. However, this increase also raises power consumption from 0.287 to 0.878 kW and nearly doubles fuel consumption, reaching 0.54 L/h at a cabin temperature of 45 °C. In addition, isentropic efficiency, volumetric efficiency, and the coefficient of performance decrease by up to 22.66\%, 44\%, and 61.27\%, respectively, while the compressor discharge temperature exceeds 80 °C at high operating speeds. Finally, correlations are proposed to estimate compressor efficiencies, and fuel consumption is calculated considering the powertrain efficiencies of a gasoline-powered internal combustion engine vehicle.
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